Can anyone afford the “Affordable” Care Act? Not if you have religious principles.

There is an alarming piece at CharismaNews which confirms what we have known all along.

Remember… it’s not really “Obamacare”… though his name, and party, are inseparable from this millstone. It’s really the AFFORDABLE Care Act.

How is that “AFFORDABLE” part working for you so far?

Obama Administration Puts a Price Tag on Your Religious Freedom

Can you put a price on religious liberty? [Aren’t dhimmis suppose to pay a fine?]

Apparently the Obama administration has.

If you value your faith; if you are one of the millions of Americans who believe that abortion pills cause the destruction of innocent, God-given human life; if you are an employer who believes that being forced to pay for others’ abortion pills is morally reprehensible, the Obama administration wants you to pay a dramatically steep price for your religious liberty.

The penalty for failure to abide by the Obamacare HHS abortion-pill mandate is an astounding $36,500 a year.

Refusal to violate your faith will cost you.

The HHS mandate requires that all employer health insurance plans cover abortion pills—that the employer must, under penalty of law, pay for the abortion pills of its employees.

According to federal law, the penalty for failure to provide this coverage is “$100 for each day in the noncompliance period with respect to each individual to whom such failure relate.”

That’s $100 a day, per employee, per year.

Needless to say, this is a penalty that adds up quickly.

For example, a business with 100 employees would face a fine of $3.65 million dollars a year for refusing to violate one’s faith.

To put this in perspective, consider this. A violation of Obamacare’s employer mandate, which requires all employers of more that 50 employees to provide health insurance for those employees, is limited under federal law to $2,000 per employee and excludes the first 30 employees from the calculation.

So in the same example as above, if the employer chose not to provide any insurance for his or her 100 employees, the fine would be $140,000 a year.

So the same company would be fined $3.65 million for providing insurance but refusing to violate its faith by paying for abortion pills, but would only be fined $140,000 for providing no insurance at all. In fact, because the administration has now delayed the employer mandate until 2015 while seeking to enforce the HHS mandate now, an employer could refuse to provide any insurance to any employee and not face even a dime in penalties. Yet failure to provide abortion-pill coverage will cost an employer dearly.

It shows you exactly where the Obama administration’s priorities are. By its own regulations, it is clear that ensuring abortion pills for all is far more valuable to the administration than religious liberty or even universal health care coverage.

It is also important to take this out of the abstract. One of our clients, the Kortes, a family that runs a very small business but that is strongly committed to running their business in compliance with their faith, face over $700,000 in fines a year, something that would absolutely cripple any business.

Thankfully, this past Friday, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ordered a preliminary injunction preventing the HHS mandate from forcing our clients to pay these fines or violate their faith as their case continues. This has been the same result thus far in all seven of our lawsuits against the mandate.

But unfortunately, this is not the case for everyone. Businesses all across America are facing these Orwellian penalties for standing for their faith.

[…]

Read the rest there.

Can anyone afford the “Affordable” Care Act?

Can anyone afford the “Affordable” Care Act? Not if you have religious principles.

Of course, other dhimmi restrictions are far worse than the US currently has, but given the proposed Quebec Secular Charter, it’s very possible for the US to go down that road very quickly if the necessary conditions align.

Forgive me Father but we need to quit advocating ‘religious freedom.’ That battle is a loser. If we possess the True Faith revealed by Jesus Christ the Second Person of the Triune God, the Word that went out at the dawn of Creation made flesh, then why argue on grounds that make it seem like everyone can just do whatever they want as long as they leave us alone? It is a loser argument and it needs to die a quick death.

There is a conflict between the circuits. The Supreme Court should be granting cert soon. This time, I think the Court will apply the Constitution correctly. The Hosanna Tabor 9-0 smack down last year gives me hope that the Court knows what it is doing in applying the First Amendment to religious liberty issues.

When my Spiritual Director, Fr. Denis E. O’Brien, co-founder of the American Life League was alive, he once told me of a very short, simple, and effective prayer to pray that has blessed me greatly and very quickly ever since. The prayer goes like this;

“O God, please clean up the mess.”

Then Father added, “We can’t tell God when, how, where, etc., leave that to Him. He knows where all the messes are. Just pray that prayer.”

Until this all comes tumbling spectacularly down (which I am optimistic it will), it is time for people to read the law, discover loopholes and get creative. Companies that can should self-insure–it is still legal in many places, for now.

I am also wondering about the possibility of incentivizing employees to turn down coverage. If they plan their withholding the right way, they’re immune from individual penalties (which are dependent on tax refunds).

I thought representative Stupak and 12 other Democrats had been assured by BHO that paying for abortion and abortifacient morning after pills was not going to be obligatory under Obama’sCare. Obama lied.

Forgive me Father but we need to quit advocating ‘religious freedom.’ That battle is a loser. If we possess the True Faith revealed by Jesus Christ the Second Person of the Triune God, the Word that went out at the dawn of Creation made flesh, then why argue on grounds that make it seem like everyone can just do whatever they want as long as they leave us alone? It is a loser argument and it needs to die a quick death.

Are you saying that it should be argued in court that the Church is the True Religion? What is the legal basis for that?

I thought representative Stupak and 12 other Democrats had been assured by BHO that paying for abortion and abortifacient morning after pills was not going to be obligatory under Obama’sCare. Obama lied.

He was given political cover, so he could sell his vote for a lobbyist job.

If Stupak knew that it was just political cover than he lied also. If not–he should have realized that he was being used by the pro abortion President. Anyone with half a brain knew that.
A lesson for people who voted for Stupak on a Democrat’s word that he was pro life. I am glad that he lost his seat in 2010.
North Louisiana. just elected another conservative to the US House. He is not a professional politician–yet. He is not Catholic but he is an outspoken Christian and has asked for prayers. He is not my Rep. but I will be praying for him as he leaves to go to Washington.

“O God, please clean up the mess.”
I will be saying that little prayer quite often.
Thank you , Gratias.

So the same company would be fined $3.65 million for providing insurance but refusing to violate its faith by paying for abortion pills, but would only be fined $140,000 for providing no insurance at all.

I can’t believe that any sensible businessperson will choose to pay $3.65 million instead of $140,000. Pay the $140,000 and give the employees money so they can buy their own insurance.

Or decide that providing the HHS-required coverage is not “formal” cooperation in evil and is justified by the benefit of providing health insurance to your employees. The USCCB has not issued a statement on “formal” vs “material,” as far as I know.

The insurance companies are not going to be offering noncompliant policies, so there won’t be an opportunity to buy one for either employees or employers. I have consulted several moral theologians and they are mostly ducking the question. One said it is only a remote cooperation in evil. Take that for what it’s worth.

I think the bishops are in a bit of a bind because they should be protesting an outrageous imposition but they don’t want to admit that if they lose they will just knuckle under. If we lose in the Supreme Court, we must fight politically, including with civil disobedience, to rescind the HHS mandate and other obnoxious provision of the ACA. The laity will have to take the lead. I can think of only one bishop who was ever arrested for protesting abortion. The root of today’s problem is the bishops’ support of the Democrats’ agenda for the last 96 years, at least since Cardinal Gibbons supported Wilson’s taking the US into WW I, despite the pleas of Benedict XV.

Gratias wrote: I thought representative Stupak and 12 other Democrats had been assured by BHO that paying for abortion and abortifacient morning after pills was not going to be obligatory under Obama’sCare. Obama lied.

The issue with Stupak (and others) was whether the Hyde Amendment, which forbids using government funds to pay for abortion (except in cases of rape, incest or danger to the life of the mother), would apply to government subsidies for insurance sold through state or federal exchanges.

President Obama said the Hyde Amendment would apply, and he issued a Presidential Order confirming that.

Section. 1. Policy. Following the recent enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (the “Act”), it is necessary to establish an adequate enforcement mechanism to ensure that Federal funds are not used for abortion services (except in cases of rape or incest, or when the life of the woman would be endangered), consistent with a longstanding Federal statutory restriction that is commonly known as the Hyde Amendment. The purpose of this order is to establish a comprehensive, Government-wide set of policies and procedures to achieve this goal and to make certain that all relevant actors — Federal officials, State officials (including insurance regulators) and health care providers — are aware of their responsibilities, new and old.

The Act maintains current Hyde Amendment restrictions governing abortion policy and extends those restrictions to the newly created health insurance exchanges. Under the Act, longstanding Federal laws to protect conscience (such as the Church Amendment, 42 U.S.C. 300a-7, and the Weldon Amendment, section 508(d)(1) of Public Law 111-8) remain intact and new protections prohibit discrimination against health care facilities and health care providers because of an unwillingness to provide, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for abortions.

Some of us read parts of the bill before it passed and warned others. Some of us have studied the history of Western Civilization and the long documentation of the persecution of Catholics in most countries. Some of us know that we are living in a time which calls for more than mediocre Catholicism. Either Catholics decide for heroic virtue and personal holiness, or they will lose their immortal souls.

We should thank God that we are living in times when we can clearly decide to become saints.

Remember Gandalf–“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.

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Food For Thought

“The legalization of the termination of pregnancy is none other than the authorization given to an adult, with the approval of an established law, to take the lives of children yet unborn and thus incapable of defending themselves. It is difficult to imagine a more unjust situation, and it is very difficult to speak of obsession in a matter such as this, where we are dealing with a fundamental imperative of every good conscience — the defense of the right to life of an innocent and defenseless human being.”

- St. John Paul II

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Should the US Bishops have us return to obligatory "meatless Fridays" during the whole year and not just during Lent?

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Additional Food For Thought

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

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Food For Thought

“Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites. . . . Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”

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